Bethesda is a census-designated place in Montgomery County,
Maryland, United States. The settlement is immediately northwest
of Washington, D.C. and is a preferred residential suburb of the
federal capital.
The name comes from a church, the
Bethesda Meeting House (1820), which was named after the
Bethesda cistern in Jerusalem. In Bethesda are the campus of the
National Institutes of Health (NIH) with the National Library of
Medicine and the National Naval Medical Center as well as other
state institutions.
Important medical institutions in Bethesda include the National
Institutes of Health, the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center,
the adjacent Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, as
well as a number of military medical and research institutions. Other
federal agencies include the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the
Naval Surface Warfare Center Carderock Branch.
Defense
conglomerate Lockheed Martin, managed care company Coventry Healthcare,
and hotel and resort chains Marriott International and Host Hotels &
Resorts Inc. are headquartered in Bethesda. Software company Bethesda
Softworks was originally located in Bethesda but moved to Rockville in
1990. The Discovery Channel was also headquartered in Bethesda until it
moved to Silver Spring in 2004. In the professional services industry,
numerous banks (PNC, Capital One Bank), brokerage firms (Morgan Stanley,
Merrill Lynch, Charles Schwab, Fidelity), and law firms (Ballard Sparr,
JDKatz, Paley Rothman, Lerch Early & Brewer) have offices in Bethesda.
Bethesda is home to two farmers' markets, the Montgomery Farm Women's
Cooperative Market and the Bethesda Central Farmers' Market In the
summer of 2021, Fox television stations relocated their Washington area
television stations WTTG and WDCA's broadcast facilities to Bethesda.
Bethesda is home to Congressional Country Club, one of the most
prestigious private country clubs in the world. Congressional has hosted
four major golf championships, including the 2011 U.S. Open, won by Rory
McIlroy. Tiger Woods' golf tournament, The National, was held seven
times at Congressional between 2007 and 2016. Bethesda is also home to
the exclusive Burning Tree Club and Bethesda Country Club, as well as
the Bethesda Big Train summer college baseball team.
Bethesda is
home to many ambassadorial residences, including those of Bangladesh,
Haiti, Cape Verde, Guyana, Honduras, Lesotho, Morocco, Nicaragua,
Uruguay, and Zimbabwe.
On April 19, 1929, U.S. President Harry S.
Truman officiated at the dedication of the Bethesda monument. The
Bethesda Post Office is located nearby. The Capital Crescent Trail
stretches from Georgetown, DC to Silver Spring, MD along the old
Baltimore and Ohio Railroad tracks. The Walter Reed Medical Center and
Bethesda Theatre are two important Art Deco buildings in the suburbs
surrounding Washington, D.C.
Bethesda Avenue.
Federal Realty
Investment Trust developed a large portion of the west side of downtown
Bethesda in an area known as Bethesda Row, incorporating New Urbanism
principles to create residential apartments and condominiums (100,000
ft2 ), retail (300,000 ft2 ), dining and office space (100,000 ft2), a
hotel, entertainment, public art, and a fountain, forming the new core
of a revitalized downtown Bethesda. Retailers include an Apple Store,
Anthropologie, and Bethesda Bagels.
As an unincorporated entity, Bethesda has no official boundaries.
According to the United States Census Bureau, the census-designated
place has an area of 34.42 km². Of this, 0.26 km² is in the water.
Maryland Route 355, also known as Wisconsin Avenue, runs through
Bethesda. This route connects Washington, D.C. with Frederick, Maryland.
Bethesda is located in an area inhabited by the Piscataway and
Nacoochee Tank tribes at the time of European colonization. Fur trader
Henry Fleet became the first European to reach the area by sailing the
Potomac River. He stayed with the Piscataway Tribe from 1623 to 1627 as
a guest or prisoner (historical accounts differ). Eventually Fleet
secured funds for another expedition to the region and was later granted
title to 2,000 acres of land in the early colonies and became a member
of the Maryland colonial legislature. Raids from the Seneca and
Susquehannock tribes led to the creation of the Maryland Ranger Division
in 1694 to patrol the frontier.
Most colonial Maryland settlers
were tenant farmers who paid their rents in tobacco, and settlers
continued to expand further north in search of fertile land. Henry
Darnall (1645-1711) surveyed 710 acres (290 hectares) in 1694, the first
land grant in Bethesda; throughout the 1700s, tobacco cultivation was
the primary means of livelihood in Bethesda. During the Revolutionary
War, Bethesda escaped the war but became a supply center for the
fledgling Continental Navy; the establishment of Washington, D.C. in
1790 deprived Montgomery County of its economic center in Georgetown,
but this event had little effect on small farmers throughout Bethesda.
Between 1805 and 1821, with the development of the
Washington-Rockville Turnpike, which carried tobacco and other products
between Georgetown, Rockville, and Frederick to the north, Bethesda
became a rural way station By 1862, stores and toll booths along the
turnpike In 1871, Postmaster Robert Frank renamed the settlement
Bethesda Meeting House after the Bethesda Meeting House, a Presbyterian
church built in 1820. The church burned down in 1849 and was rebuilt the
same year about 100 yards (91 m) to the south, and the site became the
Bethesda Meeting House cemetery.
Bethesda did not develop beyond
a small crossroads village until the 19th century. There was a
blacksmith shop, a church and school, a few houses and a store; in 1852,
the postmaster established a post office in Bethesda and appointed the
Rev. A. R. Smith as its first postmaster; a streetcar line opened in
1890, and by the early 1900s Bethesda's population had grown as it
became more suburban. Areas located along the railroad line developed
most rapidly in the 19th century. However, the mass production of
automobiles ended that dependence, and Bethesda planners developed the
community with the transportation revolution in mind: the Georgetown
branch of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, completed around 1910, ran
from Silver Spring to Georgetown, passing through It passed through
Bethesda. The branch line had a storage depot and several sidings, and
served Bethesda's industry in the early 20th century; in 1985, when CSX,
which had succeeded the B&O, ceased train service on the line, the
county transformed the branch line into a trail through the Rail to
Trail movement. The tracks were removed in 1994 and the first portion of
the trail opened in 1998.
In the late 19th century, subdivisions
began to appear on old farmland, becoming the Drummond, Woodmont,
Edgemoor, and Battery Park neighborhoods. Further north, several wealthy
men made Rockville Pike famous for its mansions. Brainerd W. Parker
("Cedar Croft," 1892), James Oyster ("Strathmore," 1899), George E.
Hamilton ("Hamilton House," 1904, now Stone Ridge School), Luke I.
Wilson ("Tree Tops" , 1926), Gilbert Hobby Grosvenor ("Wild Acre,"
1928-29), and George Freeland Peter ("Stone House," 1930). In 1930,
Armistead Peter's pioneering manor house, Winona (1873), became the
clubhouse of the Woodmont Country Club and is now part of the National
Institutes of Health (NIH) campus. Merle Thorpe's house, "Pooks Hill"
(1927, demolished in 1948), became the home of the Norwegian royal
family in exile during World War II.
World War II and subsequent
government expansion further fueled Bethesda's rapid growth. The
National Naval Medical Center (1940-42) and National Institutes of
Health (1948) complexes were built just north of the developing
downtown, attracting government contractors, medical professionals, and
other businesses to the area. In recent years, Bethesda has become a
major urban nucleus and employment center for southwest Montgomery
County. This recent vigorous growth has been accompanied by the
expansion of Metrorail, which established a station in Bethesda in 1984.
Alan Kay's construction of the Bethesda Metro Center on the Red Line
subway line furthered commercial and residential development in the
immediate area, and in the 2000s, the District of Columbia's strict
construction height restrictions led to the construction of mid- to
high-rise office and residential buildings around the Bethesda Metro
station, effectively creating a major center The city has virtually
become a major urban center.
As of the 2010 census, 60,858 people lived in 27,470 households in
Bethesda. Although the number of households fell by the comparison
period 2015-2019, the population had increased by the 2020 census to
68,056 inhabitants.
Residents are better than average educated,
with 98% of residents over the age of 25 having at least a high school
diploma, and 86% having a bachelor's degree or higher.
economic structure
Bethesda's population is among the wealthiest
and most educated in the country. Forbes magazine ranked the community
as the best American small town for education in 2009.
In 2012,
10,713 companies were based in Bethesda, including Lockheed and
Marriott.
road traffic
North of Bethesda runs Interstate 495, which runs as
a ring road around Washington, D.C.
Local public transport
The
Washington Metro's Red Line makes two stops in Bethesda. Bus service
also exists on the Montgomery County transit system.
Long-distance public transport
Daily bus service to New York City is
provided by bus companies Vamoose Bus and Tripper Bus.
air
traffic
The nearest airports are Ronald Reagan Washington National
Airport in Arlington County, Virginia, Dulles International Airport in
Fairfax County, Virginia, and Baltimore-Washington International Airport
near Baltimore, Maryland.
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants book series by Ann Brashares is
set in Bethesda.
In the computer role-playing game Fallout 3 by
Bethesda Softworks, several episodes take place in Bethesda.
Some
episodes of the Salvation series are set in Bethesda.
sons and daughters of the town
Donald Dell (born 1938), tennis
player, Davis Cup captain and players' agent
Owen Toon (born 1947),
climate scientist
Wendy Chamberlin (born 1948), diplomat
Barbara
Allen Rainey (1948–1982), pilot
Timothy C. May (1951–2018), computer
engineer
Patricia Richardson (born 1951), actress
Leo Zulueta
(born 1952), American tattoo artist
Thomas Wieser (born 1954),
economist
Josh Clark (born 1955), actor
Richard Schiff (born
1955), actor
Edward Seidel (born 1957), astrophysicist and computer
scientist
Daniel Stern (born 1957), actor, known as burglar "Marv"
from Home Alone
Michael Mayer (born 1960), theatre, musical and film
director
Isabelle Noth (born 1967), Swiss theologian
Lisa Loeb
(born 1968), singer and actress
Carsie Blanton (born 1985), singer